For months now ITV have been hyping up “The Vampire Diaries”. We on the other hand have been less than impressed as most critics have called it a Tv version of “Twilight”. With a bunch of sensitive young lovelies yearning  for danger, romance and the ultimate penetration. In between bouts of underage drinking, texting and girl-bonding, “The Vampire Diaries” is essentially just “True Blood Lite” or “Transylvania 90210.”

But this is not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all. Because “Vampire Diaries” knows precisely what it is. Its a Gothic romance, and doesn’t try to be anything else.

“The Vampire Diaries” has it all, The Rolling dry-ice fog, Croaking raven as harbinger of evil, Vampires bright and dark, Modern girl who has two brothers fighting over her soul, Honking big ring with vampire-related powers, Angel-winged tombstones and plenty of Civil War references.

Let the likes of True Blood and Twilight sniff at the moldy old and tired genre conventions, “The Vampire Diaries” stacks them up like corpses in a mausoleum and dances howling on the roof. Lonely road plus attractive couple plus swirling mist equals horrific death. Diaries and anguished voice-overs added with a soundtrack to give any emo a wet dream. This is what the “The Vampire Diaries” does best.

Deviating more than a bit from the L.J. Smith books that the show spawned from, the essential love triangle between Elena, Stefan and his brother Damon is established pretty much straight away. Add a best friend who may be psychic, a hunky ex-boyfriend, his troubled sister and would-be-rapist wingman, and the jealous blond classmate, and you have a potential blockbuster of a show.

By staking turf between “True Blood” and “Twilight,” “Vampire Diaries” hopes it has found the promised land. The danger is it could also be no man’s land.